Category Archives: Human rights

A well-known Uyghur literature researcher is the latest confirmed case of Uyghur intellectuals having disappeared as the Chinese government continues its crackdown on academics in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Dr. Abdurehim Rahman had been a lecturer in the Department of Literature at Xinjiang University, but went missing after the winter vacation of 2018, raising fears he has joined the more than one million Uyghurs detained without due process in political re-education camps in the past 18 months.

Abdurehim is known to have travelled to Turkey to visit his wife in February. One of his contacts there, speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFA’s Uyghur Service that the professor returned to Urumqi following his 15-day stay, after which all contact had been cut off.

“He came to Turkey with a group of artists to see his wife, a student at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul,” the source said. “While here, he visited many Turkology researchers from different universities to collect research material.”

“His aim was to take his research to a higher level,” the source said.

RFA contacted the security department of Xinjiang University but the call was disconnected after questions regarding Abdurehim were asked.

U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Wednesday calling for the release of over a million ethnic Uyghurs detained by China in re-education camps and urging Washington to study the scope of Beijing’s crackdown on the Muslim minority group.

In a press release announcing the launch of the bipartisan bill, in which Republican Representative Chris Smith was joined by Democrat Thomas Suozzi and eight other members of Congress, Smith said the internment of Uyghurs in camps in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region “should be treated by the international community as a crime against humanity.”

“The Chinese government’s creation of a vast system of what can only be called concentration camps cannot be tolerated in the 21st century,” said Smith, co-chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

“The brutal, religious based persecution of the Uyghurs in China is alarming,” Congressman Suozzi added in prepared remarks on Wednesday. “Xinjiang province has become nothing short of a police state.”

Among other recommendations, the proposed legislation calls on the U.S. Secretary of State to create a special position at the State Department to coordinate the U.S. response to China’s abuses in Xinjiang and to sanction Chinese officials responsible for the crackdown.

Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have arrested the current deputy editor-in-chief and two former head editors of a Uyghur-run publishing house that released books deemed “problematic” because of improper political content, official sources said.

At least 14 staff members of the Kashgar Publishing House in the XUAR’s Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) city have been arrested since last year, a source with ties to the region recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Those arrested included Ablajan Siyit, the publisher’s current deputy editor-in-chief, Osman Zunun, a former editor-in-chief who retired 10 years ago, and Abliz Omer, another former editor-in-chief who retired 20 years earlier, the source said, adding that they were detained on Oct. 15, “in the beginning of the year,” and “last year,” respectively.

The arrests are part of a “sweeping campaign” in the XUAR since the beginning of 2017 to censor literature based on political content, the source said, with sensitive books being categorized as “dangerous” or “problematic,” and anyone deemed responsible for publishing them targeted for detention.

A Uyghur athlete has made Kyrgyzstan fencing history at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.

Khasan Baudunov, who represents the Central Asian nation, came away from the games with two medals —a feat never accomplished by any other Kyrgyz fencer. He took the bronze in the boys’ epee, and a silver in the mixed team event, as part of one of two teams representing Asia.

Having tasted victory in Argentina, he returned home on October 21 to a hero’s welcome at Manas International Airport. Among the crowd of friends and family welcoming him were officials from Kyrgyzstan’s fencing federation, Olympic committee and state agency for youth, physical culture and sports.

The sword of destiny

Baudunov picked up fencing in 2014. In his Olympic profile, he says he was introduced to the sport by a friend, and when he first handled the epee he was mesmerized by the elegant weapon, and the beauty of the sport itself.

“Khasan played other sports in the past, including martial arts, but those types of sports didn’t really appeal to him,” his mother said in a telephone interview with RFA’s Uyghur Service. “Fencing drew him in like a magnet, so I encouraged him to take it up,” she said.

“Khasan’s coaches called me saying that my son is extremely talented. They said that nobody in Kyrgyzstan can match his skills and he’s always improving. Nobody has ever achieved what he has,” she added.

As many as 500 children of detained Uyghurs have been placed in a “closed school” in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to a source in exile, who said his two younger brothers are among those held.

A young Uyghur man named Jesur left his home in Kashgar’s Yarkand (Shache) county for Turkey in 2014 and shortly afterwards, in July of that year, Chinese authorities fired on residents of the county’s Elishku township who were protesting the detention of a dozen Uyghur women for praying overnight at a local mosque, killing what Uyghur exile groups say was as many as 2,000 people.

A crackdown by police in the county following the incident led to mass jailings of Uyghurs and a lockdown on communication in and out of the area, and Jesur lost contact with his family.

Jesur, now 23, told RFA’s Uyghur Service that he recently received a video in which his eight- and 10-year-old brothers tearfully informed him that several members of their family had been jailed or sent to political “re-education camps,” where authorities have detained Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017.

Human rights experts at the United Nations began examining the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s rights record on Tuesday, amid protests over “disappeared” submissions from civic groups that the U.N. body later restored with an apology.

The 31st session of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva began its assessment of China’s human rights record amid a global outcry over the mass incarceration of an estimated one million Uyghurs and other minority ethnic Muslims in “re-education camps” in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

But a consortium of rights organizations led by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said valuable information from non-government sources–including Uyghur groups –had been taken off the table ahead of the review.

“We are … dismayed by the fact that at least seven submissions were completely removed from consideration from the final document intended for U.N. member states to draft recommendations for China’s review,” HRW said in a statement.

The statement detailed “missing” contributions from the International Service for Human Rights, Hong Kong political party Demosisto, the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Officials at a university in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are forcing students and staff to forgo their Muslim dietary restrictions in favor of traditionally pork-heavy Han Chinese cuisine, saying halal food is associated with religious extremism.

A report recently published on the official website of Kashgar University, in the XUAR’s Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture, detailed an Oct. 22 meeting entitled “Remain Committed to Removing Extremism From Eating,” during which deputy secretary of the school’s Communist Party committee Ji Peng announced that all students and staff must swear an oath to “follow Chinese food culture.”

Ji informed students and staff that integrating cuisine would “promote exchanges” and “foster prosperity and development” between all ethnic groups, and called on them to “stand firm” in fighting against “pan-halalism,” which he called a tool of the “three evil forces” of “terrorism,” “extremism,” and “separatism,” used to promote their agenda in the name of religion.

Muslims are barred under their religion from consuming non-halal items such as pork, alcohol, blood, and the meat of animals that have not been slaughtered based on religious practices.

The details of the Oct. 22 meeting were made public amid recent reports that Chinese authorities have closed down all halal restaurants on university campuses in the XUAR and had initiated a campaign to remove halal signage from restaurants owned by Muslims in the region.

When asked by RFA’s Uyghur Service for further information about the new policy, a staffer at Kashgar University immediately hung up the phone.

France, Germany, the United States and other Western countries called on China on Tuesday to close down political re-education camps that Uyghur activists and human rights experts say hold one million Uyghurs and other Muslims.

The United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) began its assessment of China’s human rights record amid a global outcry over the mass incarceration of an estimated one million Uyghurs and other minority ethnic Muslims in “re-education camps” in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

While as many as 1,000 Uyghur and Tibetan protesters and supporters gathered outside the Geneva forum, which reports on alleged violations in each U.N. member state every five years, 13 countries raised concern about the camp program, with many calling on Beijing to shutter the facilities.

“We are alarmed by the government of China’s worsening crackdown on Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” U.S. charge d’affaires Mark Cassayre was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

The United States urged China to “abolish all forms of arbitrary detention, including internment camps in Xinjiang, and immediately release the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of individuals detained in these camps,” he said.

Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have detained a well-known Uyghur philanthropist who housed the children of political prisoners, according to sources that said he may have been sentenced to nearly two decades in jail.

Nurtay Hajim, who is in his 60s, amassed a fortune through an international tourism and shipping firm he set up shortly after China expanded trade relations with the nations of Central Asia in the early 1990s.

According to a report published on China’s Sina.com, Hajim invested 3.8 million yuan (U.S. $548,700) in 2007 to launch the Nurtay Iskender School for Orphans, which offers free accommodation, food and education for 150 Uyghur children whose parents have died and other kids who lack guardians, from across the XUAR.

The businessman, who is admired in the Uyghur community for his generosity, has provided an annual donation of some 1.15 million yuan (U.S. $166,000) to the school to cover the costs of its students.

A Uyghur source from the XUAR recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Hajim had been taken into custody by local authorities shortly after returning to Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture’s Qorghas (Huocheng) county from a business trip to neighboring Kazakhstan.